


Love in Whispers

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Banned Together Fills [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Child Abuse, Injury, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29100513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: The first time she knew something was different, it was a summer, Steve’s birthday.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Banned Together Fills [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825168
Comments: 14
Kudos: 97





	Love in Whispers

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my **Kids Fighting Parents BTB square**

It had never been easy for either of them. They’d learned, long ago, that trust could be shattered but never pieced back together, that once sanctuary was lost it couldn’t be regained. You had to look elsewhere. The first time Bucky went home with a bruise across his cheek, he caught another one from his father for scrapping, and a scolding from his mother for his behavior. 

It didn’t stop either of them, not that that should have come as a surprise. 

The first time Steve brought her a shirt, torn and bloodied, she knew why - it wasn’t boredom or immaturity. 

“We couldn’t let ‘em kill it, Ma,” and he was so young then that he still lisped when he spoke. 

Bucky often caught hell from his parents, but he always came right back to Steve.

“You mustn’t do it, my love,” she’d tell him softly, but it made no difference. 

She’d raised him to know right from wrong, to stand his ground, and to fight for truth, and he’d brought Bucky with him for it. She thought Steve like a little angel sometimes - righteous anger and wrath and fury. So young and so frail and having to be so strong. 

The first time she had to set Steve’s nose, Bucky’d been right there with him, trying to fool her with a mixed up concoction about falling down a flight of steps. If Steve’s the one who fell, she didn’t ask, then why was it Bucky’s knuckles were scraped, Bucky’s black eye blooming. 

“Stay,” she told Bucky, because she knew how his father could be. 

The first time she knew something was different, it was a summer, Steve’s birthday. He was still so frail but his every word was just like his father’s.

“Don’t you worry about it, Ma, I’ll find a new job - Mr Palmer says he wants somebody on the books who can count, all they gotta do is just numbers, and I know numbers.”

He was smart, was the thing. Some children didn’t have a thing between their ears, bless their souls, but not her Steve, and not Bucky either. They spoke, heads together, in hushed voices, and Bucky’d take him everywhere.

“Oh just out to the pictures, Mrs Rogers,” he’d say, or, “to the fair with a couple of gals.”

The first time Bucky came home, he was seventeen, and he knocked on their door in the middle of the night, holding a sprained wrist to his chest, his lip bleeding like he’d been in a fight, a caginess about him that suggested fractured ribs.

“Evening, Mrs Rogers,” he said. “I’m so sorry to disturb-”

And she’d brought him in. Once, when he’d been barely five, she’d tanned Steve hide once for disobedience, though it’d been much closer to terror, her having not been able to find him where she told him to stay. But she’d not done it for years. She couldn’t imagine doing to James Barnes what James Barnes’ father did to him. 

She knew they were close, of course - joined at the hip, they did everything together. They slept in the same room, they went to the same dance halls, the same fairs, and yet somehow Steve never came home with a girl and, almost invariably, Bucky Barnes would be back at their tenement without one soon enough. It wasn’t hard to see. 

James knew.

She turned her back, and turned a blind eye to boot, when she saw them one evening - and perhaps it might have been nothing, but for the way she caught James’ eye. Steve hadn’t seen, of course, barely able to see ten feet in front of him without squinting, but James had seen that she’d seen, and the look of steely resolve on his face was enough to confirm it for her. 

James, and his black eyes and broken ribs, his hidden face and carefully crafted confidence. He expected the same from her that he’d gotten from his father, and so she turned away. Love, whispered in prayers and willful ignorance.

~

“Do you think my Ma could love us still?” Steve asks one evening, amongst fireflies and tall grass in a place they’re finally able to call home without fear that it’ll be torn from their hands, “if she saw us now?”

Bucky looks at his knuckles and remembers the bruises his father gave him, the cracks and fractures, deeper wounds that won’t ever heal, and remembers too the balm of a single action on a hot summer night, eyes down, back turned.

Bucky nods slowly and tells him the truth.

“She knew.”


End file.
